A Money Coach in Canada

I’m here at the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife, which has wifi! (and offers wild goose pate – but isn’t that a contradiction in terms?)

Peter Victor authored the book Managing without Growth in which he “challenges the priority that rich countries continue to give to economic growth as an over-arching objective of economic policy”. Peter is an economics professor in Environmental Studies at York University. As a green party member, I’m very interested in ecological economics. Here’s the liveblog, ftw!

Last minute disclaimer: I’m not an economist; the information was fast and furious; please construe this liveblog as my inept attempt to capture the evening – double check everything below in his book!

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Background:

One way of understanding why we’re not taking good care of our home, the globe, is to understand how we “do” economics.

Economics is: Firms provides goods and services to Households, who provide land, labour and capital. If that’s all there is to it, it’s easy to imagine an economy that could grow and grow. Hard to imagine we would ever question growth as an objective. Here’s a diagram of this.

Missing: The Environment. First thing we have to do is add in the Environment. Let’s include Natural Inputs – flows of materials and energy from Sources and Environmental Service. How will these Natural Inputs re-emerge in the economy? as Waste Outputs. (Side: the only thing that goes and comes from the earth is Energy.)

Most of the information we rely on to make decisions is PRICE. But our information is becoming less and less reliable re: Price.

This population, of course, is not equally catered to. Most of the wealthy are in NA and Europe.

Geek-out moment: he’s showing slides of computers from 1946 to present, and also slides of phones.

Note: ironically, miniaturization allows us to build and design much larger machines – they can be computerized. Eg. world’s largest container ship carries 11,000 containers and only employs 13 people. So technology can work in many different directions.

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Thesis: Growth is not possible over the long term. In fact, growth is disappointing.

Despite reduction in energy intensity, global primary energy consumption is rising. (ie. individual units are more efficient, but the scale is increasing). Same with resource extraction – we’re getting better at using less material when extracting, but the net effect is still an increase of using energy. Peak Oil: (money coach shudders) Production started to exceed discovery in 1990.

We need to make a fundamental energy transition. We’ve done that in the past: wood – coal – oil/gas, electricity. We’ve increased our use of energy by over 20 times in the past 200 years. In the past, it was not hard to switch because it had more readily apparent benefits – cheaper, better, more powerful. Renewable options now do not have these characteristics.

(interesting sidenote of interest to this money coach about status – it’s a zero-sum game. One person purchases for status, then another does, so original person back to where they started, so they buy again)
We must knock economic growth off its pedestal.

(Nobel Prize winner) Robert Solo’s endorsement: “It’s possible that the US and Europe will find that either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure”

Can our universities adapt fast enough to this way of thinking?

Can our religious institutions adapt fast enough to this way of thinking?

Can our legal systems adapt?

Will it take disaster to make it happen, or could we look and think ahead?

About the Author

Nancy (aka Moneycoach)Imagine if Canadians were known for being all over their money. Engaged. Proactive. Getting out of debt. Savvy. Saving. Generous. Nancy wants to help.
Nancy started her own journey with money over 15 years ago, and formed her company “Your Money by Design” in 2004 to help others along the same path. It’s not the usual financial advising/investment stuff. It’s about taking control of day-to-day finances –managing monthly cashflow effectively, spending appropriately, getting out of debt, saving.
If you're ready to take control over your finances, pop by her business site, YourMoneybyDesign.com